Why do so many mums ditch their childfree friends?

The difference is that people with no children are busy because they want to be and people with children are busy because they have to be.

Your completely right but you'll never get anyone on hear to admit it 😂

It’s harder when the children are very little OP. Once they’re school-aged I’m sure your friends will have more time to think about themselves, their hobbies and their social lives. Cut them a bit of slack until then.

I spend time with people I like, regardless of their child bearing status.

rather than castigating an entire group of people op, which doesn’t make you come across very well, maybe start again with recognising there are one/a few mums who’ve dropped you, cut out all the generalised ranting, and maybe people can help you.

You keep mentioning busyness, but it’s not being busy as in having multiple engagements in a day for example, it’s that when you have a child you are now responsible for that child and every aspect of their life. So making a meal you have to decide what you will like but also what will be suitable for them, going to get the food maybe with a baby or toddler or multiple with you which can be stressful in itself, prepare dinner with them around, make sure it’s cut up suitably then help them eat, clear then up after as well as the usual tidying. Having children adds a whole other dimension to simple tasks. Add that to everything in the day and that’s why they’re busy and tired. Children are your whole life when you have them, you love them like you’ve never experienced before before it just is something no you’ve never experienced until you’ve had them.

They take over everything and they’re hard work. It just is easier to meet with your friends who have children. You can talk about them, they understand when something doesn’t go right and your children are occupied and have a play date so it kills two birds with one stone and you don’t have to have another social arrangement for the day so your children can have a play date. Having the brain space, energy or working out the time to socialise with friends who don’t have children is hard. I keep up with those who really mean something to me but others I’ll admit I have let drop. Luckily most of my friends have children and we’re now closer as a result.

I've never done this or known anyone who has done it so I don't know what or if there is a general reason for it. Based on your last paragraph, which is very scathing, this could be more of a personal issue. Maybe something about you makes people think you're not worth the effort once they have less time for friendships.

I think most friendships are of proximity and things in common.Parenting young children is a different season of life that takes priority in that friends life, equally a single friend could need to prioritise their work .It's not impossible to maintain friendships with people in different seasons but sometimes its the demands of the season that makes thing harder to do. Having said that,we modern technologies in communication its doable.

God, the replies on this thread!

OP, I totally get why you’d be upset at your friends no longer being bothered about you, especially if they were very close friends before.

Mum here and honestly I prefer my childfree friends, or the times when I can see my friends without their kids. Can’t stand all this hanging about in softplay crap!!

I’ve still maintained all my friendships with my childfree friends and always will.

The truth is as another poster said, some women make being a mum their whole identity and therefore need their friendships to reflect that too. Thankfully there’s lots of us around who don’t do that and don’t automatically assume our lives are busier/ time is more valuable than a childfree persons.

It’s upto you whether you want to continue to make the effort and just accept they might be a bit crap for a while whilst their children are young, or whether you sack them off completely and find new friendships. No one could blame you for the latter, however they may also become better friends to you again once their children are a bit older so may be worth holding out.

Maybe they are struggling and the only thing that helps is to share the experience with others going through the same thing. I'm sure it's not personal.

I don't know your specific friends, I'm just commenting on my own situation. However meeting my ( very cherished ) child free friends from university takes quite a bit of coordination and effort and I feel guilty or awkward about asking to do child friendly activities.
Whereas local mum friends I don't have as deep a relationship with I see a lot more often as I can just text and say I'm heading to soft play if anyone wants to join.

This is the opposite experience to what I had, I was the first of my friends to have a baby at 25 out of a group of 5 ranging from 25-30 and they all seemed super excited- hosted a baby shower for me etc.
Once she was born they would get annoyed that I couldn't drop everything to go out with them when they text me at 5pm suggesting dinner and drinks out etc. My husband worked away at the time and I had a tiny baby. By the time she was 6 months old none of them wee speaking to me anymore as I 'prioritised my baby over them'... well obviously!

Or every 3 months...
Tbh a lot if my childless fruends are at least as busy as we are as a family. Just with other stuff.

I kept in touch with my childless friends but it was harder work to maintain. Things aren’t the same. You only want short visits because you don’t want to be away from your child for too long - plus you’re bone tired, and if you’re not with your child, you want to be asleep or slobbing on the sofa. So a quick coffee for an hour a month is often enough.

Secondly the chat isn’t quite on the same wavelength. They’re going on about some dumb bloke messing them about for the umpteenth time, or some trivial office gossip that one time would've been ultimately interesting but now that all sinks into insignificance. You fall in love with your child and you are obsessed with every aspect of their being - it’s hard to suppress that for any length of time to give a shiny shit about Emma-from-HR’s hen do drama.

As your child grows and maybe more babies come along, the sheer pressure of maintaining friendships outside of the incidental ones at toddler groups etc become so hard, something has to give.

Don’t take it personally, she’s going through a different season of life is all. Keep in touch and remember it all when you are in that position with a screaming child who has kept you up all night for a month and someone says ‘Any chance of a girls night out?’

Why do you keep comparing everyone’s busy? It’s not a matter of the level of busyness, it’s who wants to make the effort but also is the effort worth it. Because if they are met with this sort of attitude they will quickly stop prioritising you.

You’ll get loads of people telling you how busy parents are and how it’s soooo difficult to send the odd WhatsApp or arrange the odd coffee. It’s mostly bollocks, of course 🤷‍♀️

I’m fully prepared to get totally shot down in flames but I think a lot of mums (and it’s only ever mums) turn their kids into their entire identity - everything is focused on them, they never want to leave them or do anything without them. Then, when their kids get older and have friendships independent of their “mum friends”, they wonder why everyone has dropped them and is no longer interested.

Not your call is it?

People having children or not can spend their time as they want or see fit.

I was one of the last ones to have kids in my friendship group and never noticed being ‘iced out’ however I generally observed that once they had kids they were less available which is surely understandable.

For the last few years I’ve only had one friend left who doesn’t have children and although I haven’t seen her as much as I did pre-kids (I haven’t seen any friends as much 😂) I’ve still made the effort with her (and likewise) because she’s a forever friend. I’ve never subjected her to soft play! She’s pregnant now and I’m delighted to share a new dimension of our lives.

Quite often it's simply easier to go out with other mums and their children fir the plstground. Shouldn't be hard to understand.

It doesn't really has a lot to do with you.

I don’t think you understand and this is why they are avoiding you.

Could be any number of reasons.

Perhaps they resent having children and don’t want to see someone having a childfree life.

Could be priorities change, friendships drift, life becomes busy.

I prefer child free friends! It means MY child gets more fuss!

Having a baby is a stressful, bewildering time, especially if it's your first. You suddenly have this tiny, helpless human that you need to keep alive. It can't tell you what it needs and it (frequently) cries. You don't know what to do with it. It prevents you sleeping for weeks/months on end. You are desperate for support and advice. It's also incredibly lonely and isolating as it can seem impossible to even care for yourself, let alone get out of the house, other than to places where everyone understands what you are going through.
So you turn to others in the same boat. You compare woes and worries and give each other advice and ideas to try.
It isn't that we don't want to see old friends any more, it's just that our lives have become overwhelmed by something completely alien to many of us and we are desperately seeking sense of it.

I think you need better friends! I have a child and have plenty of friends who don’t. I have some friends who are parents, of course, but they are people that I know from uni/work/life rather than because they’re parents. I don’t really have ‘mum friends’.